‘I met your old mate, Jeannie, today. That’s how I know everything – she told me all about the house in Ilford.’ She could see her mother’s head working, trying to figure out exactly what she was saying, could almost hear her brain whirring as she tried to lie her way out of what they both knew was the truth.

‘What the hell have you been taking this time, eh? What the fuck are you on, Gabriella, to make you come out with this shit?’

Gabby found she’d picked up a large bronze statue of a cat. As she held it in her scarred hands she felt the weight of it. Her mother kept talking. The world according to Cynthia Tailor who, along with God Himself, was almost omnipotent in the lives of her family, who ruled everyone around her with a rod of iron. She could see her mother’s mouth moving constantly, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying any more; all she was conscious of was a rushing noise in her ears. Then she struck her.

She lifted the bronze statue back over her head and hit her mother across the face with it, using all the force she could muster, and enjoying the feeling of total retaliation. She was determined now, determined to shut her mother up once and for all.

Cynthia fell sideways on to the white leather sofa. The spray of blood that came from her mother’s face was like a crimson mist. Gabby hit her again and again, each blow easing the knot inside her, each blow seeming to calm the erratic beating of her heart.

She looked down at the bloodied form and, for the first time in years, she felt almost at peace. Her mother’s face was unrecognisable, a deep red gash that was pumping out blood at an alarming rate.

Gabby looked at the woman she had hated nearly all her life. Then she sat down on the ladder-backed chair her mother was convinced was an antique, put her face into her bloodied hands and cried.

Book One

Long is the way

And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light

Paradise Lost (1667)

John Milton, 1608–74

For the love of money is the root of all evil

1 Timothy 6:10

Chapter One

1984

‘Come on, Jimmy, have another one. I’m celebrating.’

Jimmy Tailor grinned; he had an easy-going nature that some people took advantage of. He was a big man, big in all ways – over six feet and well built. Before his marriage he had been a body builder, and he still held traces of his former physique.

‘Nah, better get home, Cynthia’s waiting for me.’

It was Friday night and all his pals were going to have a few more pints before meeting their wives and girlfriends later on in a wine bar in the West End. He would have loved to have joined them, but he knew that Cynthia wouldn’t come.